What a Vancouver roof actually produces
Natural Resources Canada puts Vancouver at roughly 1,007 kWh a year for each kW of panel capacity on a well oriented array. That is the figure to build an estimate on: a 6 kW system lands somewhere near 6,000 kWh a year, a 9 kW system near 9,000. It is an annual average rather than a daily one, and the distribution matters as much as the total. Most of that production arrives in the long days on either side of midsummer, and a panel under heavy overcast in December can deliver a small fraction of its rating. A design that only works if winter cooperates is not a design.
Orientation and shading decide most of the rest. A south facing plane collects the most over a full year, east and west planes spread output across the morning and afternoon while giving up some annual total, and a north face is rarely worth panelling. There is a Vancouver specific twist to that now. Because BC Hydro credits exported energy below what you pay for imported energy, a kilowatt hour you consume yourself is worth more than one you send out, so west facing capacity deserves a second look: it pushes production later into the afternoon and early evening, when a household is more likely to be home and drawing power. Shade is the other thing worth being blunt about. A single shaded module can drag down an entire string unless the system uses per panel optimisers or microinverters, so a chimney, a neighbouring tree or a parapet is a design input, not a detail.
How BC Hydro treats what you export now
Vancouver homes connect to BC Hydro, and the rules changed on 1 July 2026. Rate Schedule 1289, the old net metering rate, is closed to new customers. A system connected today enrols in Rate Schedule 2289, the self generation rate. Any quote or article that promises you net metering in Vancouver is describing a rate you can no longer join.
What did not change is the part that does most of the work. Your panels still power your home first, and your generation is still netted against your consumption inside each billing period, so production that lines up with use never touches the grid or the rate schedule at all. What ended is banking. Under the old rate, surplus kilowatt hours carried forward as kilowatt hours and offset later bills at retail value, so a strong July could effectively pay for a dark November. Under Rate Schedule 2289, only a surplus left at the end of a billing period is settled, and it is settled in money rather than in energy: a fixed 10 cents per kWh credit applied against the energy charges on your bill, for systems up to 100 kW.
Ten cents sits below the residential energy rate, so an exported kilowatt hour is now worth less than one you keep. Two practical consequences follow. First, sizing should follow your own daytime load rather than your annual consumption total, because the old approach of oversizing an array so that summer surplus covers winter no longer works the way it did. Second, anything that moves consumption into daylight hours, an EV charged in the afternoon, a heat pump water tank on a daytime schedule, a dishwasher run at noon, is worth more than it used to be. One more thing worth knowing: BC Hydro time of day pricing is opt in. The default residential rate is still the tiered one, and you will not be billed on peak and off peak rates unless you actively choose to switch.
If you already had net metering before the change, you are not moved immediately, and the protection is measured from your own start date rather than from the rate change. You stay on Rate Schedule 1289 until ten years have passed from your own initial net metering service start date, so a Vancouver system connected in 2018 transitions in 2028.
Your roof, and who actually decides
Vancouver has 305,335 dwellings, and for most of them the first question is not roof pitch, it is who gets to say yes. Only 14.7% are single detached houses with a roof one owner controls outright. Low rise apartments account for 31.2% of the stock and high rises another 31.1%, so 62.3% of Vancouver homes sit in buildings where a rooftop array is a strata or building level project rather than a homeowner purchase. Row houses add 3.5% and semi detached homes 1.6%.
Duplexes are the interesting middle at 17.8%. A duplex roof is usually one shared structure, and roof work generally touches common property even where the strata plan divides the building, so the other owner and the strata are part of the decision. If you are in any strata building, the realistic path is to raise solar as a common property alteration well before you start collecting quotes. Approval, not installation, is the long pole in that kind of project, and the array has to be sized to the consumption of the building rather than to any single suite.
If you are in the 14.7% with a detached house, the sequence is simpler but not empty. Check the age of the roof covering first: panels last for decades and shingles do not, so re-covering a roof that is near the end of its life before the array goes on avoids paying later to remove and reinstall a system you have already bought. Then check midday shading on the planes you would actually use, and have the electrical service assessed, since the main panel has to accommodate a back fed breaker sized for the inverter.
Permits, and the heritage question that comes first
An electrical permit is always required for rooftop solar in Vancouver. Whether you also need a full building permit depends on the specifics of your project: the age of the roof, the weight of the panels and the mounting method. That is a genuine branch in the process rather than a formality, and it changes both the drawings you need and the time the approval takes, so ask your installer early which side of it your roof falls on.
Heritage is the constraint that can stop a Vancouver project outright, which is why it belongs at the start of your process rather than the end. Buildings on the Vancouver Heritage Register, or inside a heritage conservation area, are referred to heritage and planning staff before any panel installation, and may not be approved. The city regulates four historic areas: Chinatown, Gastown, First Shaughnessy and Yaletown. First Shaughnessy is a heritage conservation area with its own list of protected properties. If your address is on the Register or inside one of those areas, confirm that before you spend time on quotes and roof layouts, because the outcome there is genuinely uncertain rather than merely slow.
Rebates, financing and what they cost you
The BC Hydro solar and battery rebate offers up to $5,000 for residential solar, calculated at $1,000 per kW of installed generator capacity and capped at 50% of the total installed cost. Battery storage paired with solar earns up to $1,500, at $500 per kWh with a 5 kWh minimum and the same 50% cost cap, rising to up to $5,000 where the battery is enrolled in Peak Saver. Since 1 June 2026 the work has to be done by a member of the Home Performance Contractor Network for the rebate to apply, so contractor eligibility is a first call question rather than something to discover after you have chosen.
There is one string attached that is easy to miss: taking the rebate places you on the Self Generation Service rate. For a new Vancouver installation that is where you were headed anyway, so the rebate costs a new customer nothing in rate terms. It is only a real trade off for a homeowner already on the old net metering rate, who would be giving up their remaining grandfathered years to claim it.
Federally there is less on offer than there used to be. The Canada Greener Homes Loan, interest free up to $40,000, stopped accepting new applications on 2 October 2025, and only previously approved loans are still being funded. Its replacement, the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program, delivers no cost retrofits through provincial partners and is aimed at low to median income households; solar is eligible federally, but each province sets its own technology list. Canada has no federal investment tax credit for residential solar, so any pitch built around one is using American numbers. British Columbia has at times exempted qualifying solar equipment from provincial sales tax, and the scope moves with provincial budgets, so confirm the current PST treatment of your specific equipment when you buy.